Something for the weekend. The Star Spangled Banner. Often assailed by critics as unsingable, too war-like and on other grounds, I love it and I am proud that it is our National Anthem. It is an interesting song for a national anthem in that the first stanza, the one we all attempt to sing, has an important question at the end of it: Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? That particular question has to be asked by each generation of Americans, ours no less than the generations who came before us.

Here is a superb video giving the historical back ground behind the writing of The Star Spangled Banner:

“Pacifists are the last and least excusable on the list of the enemies of society. They preach that if you see a man flogging a woman to death you must not hit him. I would much sooner let a leper come near a little boy than a man who preached such a thing.”